Everyone Loves Baby Animals

When people think of companies that excel at social media a lot of times they think of large corporations like Coca Cola or Starbucks. But there are smaller, more local businesses out there that also knock it out of the park when it comes to using social media and one of my favorites is a non-profit to boot! What org could I be talking about? The Woodland Park Zoo, of course.

Here is what they excel at and why people love connecting with them:

1. Sharing photos of cute animals (including baby animals).
2. Sharing videos of cute animals doing cute animal stuff.
3. Telling the story behind each cute animal.

They do all this using the resources they have at hand (it's a zoo so lots of material), and then sharing it across all the usual social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the blogosphere. If you are Facebook fan like me, then this past week when everyone was flooding your Facebook feed with complaints about the snow in Seattle, you got a temporary break from it all with a simple post from the Woodland Park Zoo showing off the animals playing in the snow. Priceless and adorable.

By using social media as described above, the Woodland Park Zoo is not only creating an environment for its fans to connect and get updates, but they are creating meaningful connections between their fans and the animals they care for. Getting people to care about the animals at the zoo and spread that passion fits perfectly into their mission, and it will drive not only more funds to the Zoo and their works but create passionate advocates for the Zoo's education and conservation programs making lasting changes for the good. And everyone loves to see baby animals too.